Bach Suita dg

Nobody knows why Johann Sebastian Bach composed his six suites for solo cello. Nor does anybody know how it came about that the suites were soon afterwards consigned to oblivion and more than a century before a 13-year-old Spanish musical prodigy discovered a worn copy of the score in a second-hand bookstore store in Barcelona. For the next 11 years Pablo Casals practiced them every day. Finally, in 1936, he entered London’s Abbey Road studios to record the second and third suites for the first time. The rest, as they say, is history. Today, Bach’s cello suites have become a rite of passage for all aspiring cellists.

This is Philip Higham's second recording, following his debut of Benjamin Britten's three solo suites. | Bach's cello suites, Britten's inspiration, are a pinnacle of the repertoire for any cellist. The suites were written between 1717–1723, when Bach served as a Kapellmeister in Köthen. | Higham's thoughtful yet daring approach also leads him to combine elements of period and modern style both in his playing and in his choice of instruments – a 1697 cello for the first five suites and a 2013 five-string instrument to bring out the extraordinary range of colours with which Bach invested the crowning Sixth. | On this recording, Higham uses tAnna Magdalena Bach's manuscript copy of the works. | In recent months Higham has appeared as soloist with the Philharmonia Orchestra, the Hallé Orchestra at Bridgewater Hall, the Royal Northern Sinfonia and Bournemouth Symphony Orchestra.

Made at the age of 50, this is Pieter Wispelwey's third recording of the Cello Suites by J.S. Bach, and in very many ways his most impressive. The big difference in this case is that the cello is equipped with gut strings and tuned to 392 Hz. This results in tuning roughly a half-tone lower than usual, and with lower tension in the strings this has a greater effect than you might imagine. The low tension strings makes the way the music 'speaks' very different, and this is articulated in peformances which have a strong narrative feel and less emphasis on the lyrical side of the music.

Made at the age of 50, this is Pieter Wispelwey's third recording of the Cello Suites by J.S. Bach, and in very many ways his most impressive. The big difference in this case is that the cello is equipped with gut strings and tuned to 392 Hz. This results in tuning roughly a half-tone lower than usual, and with lower tension in the strings this has a greater effect than you might imagine. The low tension strings makes the way the music 'speaks' very different, and this is articulated in peformances which have a strong narrative feel and less emphasis on the lyrical side of the music.

Here is another of Gustav Leonhardt's mixed programmes but this one, unlike the earlier European grand tour ((CD) 426 352-2PH, 4/90), is confined to German repertory and is played not on the harpsichord but on the clavichord. The earliest music is by Christian Ritter, who was born in the mid seventeenth century and who was based mainly in Halle where he was employed as an organist. His Suite in F sharp minor is an appealing work somewhat in the manner of Froberger; the opening Allemande is beautifully written and well sustained and the poignant Sarabande an affecting piece built on a descending octave pattern which gives it the character of a lament.

An eminent interpreter of Vivaldi, Giuliano Carmignola has always had a great affinity with the music of Johann Sebastian Bach, as can be heard in his landmark recordings of the Violin Sonatas with Andrea Marcon (2002), the Violin Concertos with Concerto Köln (2014, Diapason d'or), and the Sonatas & Partitas (2018), which Gramophone judged to be "a first-rate choice among the recordings of these works on period instruments, despite the competition”. Carmignola’s latest project took shape during the Covid lockdowns of 2020 and offers a new and sometimes experimental reading of Bach’s Suites à Violoncello Solo senza Basso, in which he highlights new details and exalts the choreatic character and the brilliance of many of the suites’ movements.

Could Bach’s Suites be most representative of his French identity? Composed in Germany around 1720 at the Court of Köthen, like the Brandenburg Concertos, for a Francophile and gambist, they find in Myriam Rignol’s vision and vibrant embodiment an unmistakable French flavour, transcended by the viola da gamba! When an exceptional talent meets the instrument that makes Bach resound in Versailles, lending it the rhythm of the dances so dear to Louis, in a polyphony like no other, Johann Sebastian dazzles in the Palace of the Sun King…

The poetry and radiance of Bachs cello suites (BWV 1007-1012) are transfigured in these remarkable interpretations by Kim Kashkashian on viola, offering a different kind of somberness, a different kind of dazzlement as annotator Paul Griffiths observes. One of the most compelling performers of classical and new music, Kashkashian has been hailed by The San Francisco Chronicle as an artist who combines a probing, restless musical intellect with enormous beauty of tone. An ECM artist since 1985, she approaches Bach s music with the same commitment as revealed in her other solo recordings, the legendary Hindemith sonatas album and the widely acclaimed (and Grammy-winning) account of Kurtág and Ligeti.

Bach aficionados will be delighted to find again Wieland Kuijken in this reference album coupling the Cello Suites and Gamba Sonatas (with his son Piet), originally released in 2004 and shortly afterwards out of print. As Wieland Kuijken confesses in his interesting text, he laboured over the Cello Suites with his instrument (credited to Andrea Amati) for 30 years before eventually deciding that his interpretation was ready for this compelling recording: ‘Today more than ever, I think it is a whole lifetime that one puts into these works, regardless of whatever one might say, whatever one might know.’